The Odyssey And Beowulf s Morality - 1591 Words

Stories have always been a means of imparting the wisdom and knowledge of a society to young and old alike. Works like The Odyssey and Beowulf contain as much moralizing as children’s tales from Aesop’s Fables, the only difference being that The Odyssey and Beowulf’s morals are revealed in subtler ways. With the advent of the novel, many used the new genre as a way to moralize to women through novels such as Moll Flanders or comment on society such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Yet, Henry James in his essay, â€Å"The Art of Fiction† seeks to dispel the notion that novels must moralize by offering a new, better purpose for the novel and allowing novelists artistic license in how they create their stories. However, though his ideas may have been fresh at the time, not all of them have held up over time. Though he sought to separate morality from the novel, the two still work together to create memorable, lasting fiction. Henry Ja mes had a threefold purpose in writing â€Å"The Art of Fiction.† He sought to respond to Walter Besant’s lecture wherein the novelist asserted that there were hard and fast laws which governed fiction, to defend the novel as a significant artistic genre, and to advise aspiring novelists (Richter, 434-435). In his final paragraphs, he addresses what he found most interesting about Besant’s lecture: the â€Å"conscious moral purpose† of the novel (Richter, 446). The morality of a novel â€Å"is a question surrounded with difficulties,† James saysShow MoreRelatedBeowulf: The Canonization of Anglo-Saxon Literature into Modern Popular Culture769 Words   |  4 Pages The cover of the November, 1975 comic book Beowulf: Dragon Slayer features a red-haired, horn-helmeted Beowulf swinging a large broadsword at a purple-caped villain also bearing two razor-sharp swords. As Beowulf rears up on his steed, a bikini clad woman, cloth slightly aside to reveal the shadow of a buttock is drawn falling, face filled with terror. In the background, a rising full moon and silhouetted gothic castle keenly set an atmosphere of dread and foreboding. Above the emboldenedRead MoreWhy Forrest Gump Is Very Much An Epic1584 Words   |  7 Pagesdifferent characterizations of the title character and minor characters along with additional events, or changes to the timeline. Many of the events in the story are comparable to happenings in other epic tales as well such as Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey and to a lesser extent in its precursor Homer’s The Iliad. Odysseus’s journey and the epic adventure that was Forrest Gump’s life are quite reminiscent of each other. When Forrest Gump leaves Greenbow, Alabama to play football for the University of